[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercus center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at marcus.org for a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links visit conversations withth tyler.com hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler I'm talking today with Jacob mikowski he is the
author of one of my favorite books this year it is called goodbye Eastern Europe an intimate history of a divided land he is also a well-known journalist he's published in the New York Times Atlantic Harpers and many other places a historian who studied at UC Berkeley and in general an allaround smart curious person Jacob welcome thanks so much for having me on it's a real pleasure if you had to generalize about the different in
senses of humor between Eastern Europe and Western Europe how would you put it the Eastern Europeans have a real sense of humor I don't know what Western European humor is but a sense of the tragic sense of the Absurd sense of how those two go together I think that's a great question finding laughter in the worst situations finding a way to to laugh at really dark things I think that's a feature of German Jewish humor ashkanazi humor and
I think it's found everywhere across the region I know there's a Romanian saying to to kind of laugh at your tears and I think that kind of sums it up laugh at your Sorrows what do you think of the stereotype that a Eastern Europeans don't smile very much and B they sometimes think Americans are stupid for smiling so much true untrue I grew up believing it completely and you grew up in Poland right well no
I grew up in America and a Polish family and that i' go back and forth a few times and and I grew up in a family that kind of got the parents who kind got stuck here inadvertently in 1981 when martial law was declared they were here they were in America for either six weeks or or six months B different visas and then they kind of got trapped and they lived in a kind of a Polish Cultural bubble they didn't know English
when they they came here or very little and I grew up kind of in that culture and yeah that's absolutely I don't smile that much my mom doesn't we often get asked if we're very serious are we sad are we depressed and I do find and or I
did find or American habits that are a little odd like nervous laughter that's not really aasn European thing to punctuate sentences with a laughter you know just sort of introduce yourself you know I'm Bob from Ohio very
strange so there is a little bit of a microcultural disconnect I I grew up believing that completely and being told that by my parents too I was in Poland last year and I had the sense this surprised me that polls right now are smiling a fair amount maybe more say than Germans would be doing now is that just 4% rate of growth for several decades or do you think my impression is incorrect and people still are going
around looking somewhat grumpy I think you're right I think it's growth plus the hegemonic West expanding which is not necessarily a bad thing but a certain set of cultural mores has crumbled especially in kind of the big like in Warsaw I remember how shocked I was when I had like really good customer service in a cafe in like maybe 20067 with the kind of that extra American would you like anything more with that and I'm like what are what are
you saying what are you talking to me and the mores had started to shift that kind of old confrontational Dow way of interacting had inflected and now it's really changed now there's a new generation that seems much more Western seems much more American and it is like it's visible in customer interactions stores fashion and yeah and how people even facial expressions eye contacts a little like more direct than it used to be I
think if I think of the Russian women I know they would say be in their 50s largely it's surprising to me or was originally how many of them had their kids quite young maybe they were 20 21 might have even divorced shortly afterwards and then had kind of a second Real Marriage that pattern seems to have shifted there's much more marrying in the late 20s which is more of a US higher education Western European you know
Rhythm to childbearing having children then in the early 30s what caused that change and why did they have kids so young to begin with that's interesting that's actually very true of my aunt who stayed in my my mom came to America to visit her aunt and my aunt stayed in Poland and had a her first daughter that 21 had that kind of First Short marriage and then a later marriage another daughter and that has kind of changed I
think it's a shift to those more Western more career oriented Home and Car oriented savings oriented Lifestyles I mean this a really different political economy in the 70s and 80s you were not waiting to save up for an apartment you were usually on a list that your parents put you on and you were waiting to be ranted fed right to an apartment you didn't have a hope of a car and jobs were kind of not exactly crapshoot but you were GNA be
assign something so you could actually start you could if you went through college even if you didn't you might be in a position to have a place to live and an income to support a family at 21 22 and nothing much to save up for no real way to save up no real goal to save towards and that's completely shifted people are trying to wait and in a pretty unstable in Poland a volatile economy at least in the past 20 years
growing but with some Tremors and people have that more Western of like save up for now you can buy a house you can Apartments have become expensive so it's it's a much more Western life track that people are on you've studied Poland you've lived there you're fluent in Polish if you compare your understanding to say you're Highly Educated American readers what's the key thing you feel you understand about polish culture that
maybe they don't and let's say they've been to Poland once and they've read two or three books on it but they're not experts interesting question I and I feel I come at polish culture a little bit scance from the way most polls come at polish culture so I might say I feel like I have a different approach to polish culture than Americans who come to Poland cold and from a lot of polls who see Poland and have grown up in a
Poland that's largely monocultural mono ethnic monor religious 99% Polish Polish speaking 99% Catholic around there they little bit of little bit of erosion and now there's a lot bigger Ukrainian minority than it used to be but up to
recently and that people project that back into the past that's what Poland's been always and I come from a Polish Jewish Family with Lithuanian Roots split polish and Jewish not just Jewish historically Poland's been much more
mutable it's expanded and contracted it's included many people who we wouldn't call poles now but who are under polish rule it was multi- religious Jews were part of this state and entity for centuries and included other men like B Russians are deeply tied up with this other part of Poland the grand Dutch of Lithuania in Poland there is a name for there kind of two schools of thought on what Poland is and
should be they come from the two dynasties that ruled Poland the first two dynasties there's past Poland and yalon Poland and piast is that more narrow one culture one religion that's what's been assigned to it and that's the kind of the dominant View and the yeloni are this bigger we're a confederation of peoples we're a bigger country we can we have kind of a a big tent version of polishness and I'm I kind of come from that so I think
there's more to it than most Americans know and also in a way than some polls know this polycultural background how much do you feel it has strong Deep Roots so is it your view that well now it's mostly gone it really will not come back or the fact that what we now call Poland was so strongly polycultural say you know 100 years ago 150 years ago that this will insult sense reemerge and it will reemerge because it had been
part of the past for so long really interesting because it really was deeply rooted deep in the Middle Ages definitely in early modernity and that old mostly supposedly mostly polish Poland actually was hard to recover actually was kind of west of the western part of Poland it had tons of Germans which people forget it was also in a different way different balance multiethnic but the 20th century did so much to change Poland's geography
Poland's borders Poland's ethnic and religious makeup that if you would asked me that 15 years ago 10 years ago I'd say no it's Poland is what it is Poland is you know the White Eagle the Pope the Catholic church it's a pretty set thing it's amazing how much I think the war in Ukraine has changed things that we're going towards and the influx of ukrainians and actually B Russians too and people from actually they're also Chans in a smaller
number people from the former Soviet Union and because of that war the I think perceptions of difference have really shifted in Poland it's become from a very closed Society I think a much I think it's opened up a little bit in a very meaningful way and it's recovering some of that poly polyethnicity that had lost we'll see how lasting that is but I think something has really shipped in the last few years is there a future of any kind
for Germanic culture and influence in Poland so as you know RAV was once brow a lot of the achievement in that City came from people of with Germanic Origins growing up speaking German is that somehow inevitable given where Germany and Poland are again that's been wiped out it's just simply never coming back Germany's depopulating bye-bye Germanic influence in Poland in any direct sense what do you think I think the Germanic
influence comes from Po's living and working in Germany cian cesia that part of Poland that that's on that side has people there a larger percentage of them have German or mixed German Roots there's an area in the South that had a larger number of Germans stay most Germans were left or forced to leave there's some influence but the bigger thing is that that border area people really go to Germany and Switzerland and
Austria to work people from Eastern Poland the pattern has been to go to the UK and France and Belgium or America so the influence I think comes from Return migration and crossb travel Germans don't aren't going that much
back to Poland they do people with roots and there are a lot of Germans with roots in both Northern Poland and Western Poland they go they see the old church the old Cemetery the old house a lot of that stuff is actually intact it
there's Nostalgia tours but they're not moving back very much so I think the it's from what context what influenc artart from labor migration why is the best polish folk art from Southern Poland it is it is from po Southern Poland I'll Venture guess that's hard to for me to say for sure but some of it is the mountains are a little different the south of Poland is the only place that has real terrain all all the rest of it
flat the South has our Carpathian Mountains has all difference and the culture there is a little different was different they gural and the kind of me mountain people in the direct South zakana and in the past groups called the boes and LMS or lmos Orthodox groups it was a more Multicultural area and it was hapsburg and it was under the hapsburgs it was kind of the most underdeveloped the most rural ruritanian part of Poland it was
because Poland's kind of a nice natural experiment it split into three parts in 1795 one part went to Prussia and became kind of economically prosperous but culturally uninteresting as the kind of agricultural Hinterland of an industrializing State the Russian part became the industrializing core like center of a more economically backward state became the warsa and wui became the big Factory hubs centers and then
Galia the South joined an Empire that was the hapsburg Empire this kind kind of in between economically but was left extremely underdeveloped extremely poor up up to Independence up to 1918 and I think that maybe incubated and kept some of that folk life intact it was neither industrializing nor westernizing the way the Prussian is and that's that's a that's speculation it might just be that the paint's better but speaking of
experiments if you look at a map you look at Ken andr formerly kingburg you look at the salki Gap what's the actual equilibrium there like territory separated from the mother country Alaska aside it tends not to go very well most of all in the history of Eastern Europe I mean what do you expect do I expect you know poolish tanks storming K the K's birthplace not really I think as much as those like exclaves used to be
and still are in the Goro caruk very precarious being in nuclear power is an awfully big Trump card I I can't see any of the country surrounding that oblast making a big move it it'll be I don't think it's even that big of a deal to the to in Poland you never talk or think about it a little bit but I think it's hard for the Russians to Stage anything major from there but it's also hard for any of the surroundings to do a lot
against it so I think it's a curio I don't think it's the I don't think it's the Crimea of the Baltic I think it'll be a an issue but not a huge issue but how many Eastern European borders have stayed the same for say even 50 or 60 years the Dan's always been there Dan the Dan's a good one is Bulgaria Romania has that been a stable border not completely completely part that they swapped post World War II there's a
there was Bulgaria used to no Romania used to cross down and have a little bit more of the Bulgarian was now the Bulgarian Coast so there's a piece of Southern deia I think that they swap but as a whole the river you know it's like great it's used to be the frontier of the Roman Empire for a long time it's still a solid Bulgarian Romanian border real linguistic Frontier so that's a solid longtime Frontier are there others the
carpathians are one of the few natural boundaries that Slovak Polish border is pretty set for a long time um there's so few stable borders and the one weird why not think that will be unstable too so 80 years from now I would be shocked if the status quo were still holding in Eastern Europe well with Ken andrad and the so cap I have no idea which way it will flip but that just me unlikely I mean it's really Russian there though there's the who
would take it back it's there aren't any Polish people there there are no lithuanians there's a Lithuanian Nostalgia for part of it part of it had Lithuanian culture that's been almost wiped out so unless it goes independent well Russia could grow as another possible equilibrium right possible we could all not a pleasant one but it's happened before it's true I mean there's so many other points of AFF flection of tension in mova and
transnistria and bellarus and Ukraine that's where I would focus KR it's odd but we could kind of I know it's like the malta you could kind of or Luxembourg it could kind of maybe exist for a long time but I'm not sure these days why is the food in Poland so good I'm glad to hear you say that I the best food in Europe it's really good but you know like the best food I have in Poland there's some really good
Vietnamese restaurants because there's a Vietnamese minority that that comes goes back to the 70s and 80s but Polish food is best when it's made by by bobes by polish Grandmas so I go to Milk bars and it's always the best meal I was up in the Soki Gap two years ago in in suaki went to a Milk Bar which is a kind of a communist Relic they meant that it was a kind of a daytime cafeteria you'd get polish standards but you couldn't get
any alcohol and usually in the bad days they they wouldn't let you have the even the utensils the forks would have two tin so no one would steal them great food very cheap very good uh there are more levels to polish Gastronomy now you can get really fancy food you can get incredible artisanal perogi but just simple well-made country homestop Polish food is fantastic so it's Ukrainian though 20th Century Polish
poetry I try reading it as a non polish speaker and it doesn't really make sense to me it seems untranslatable is there a way a non-polish speaker can access the glories of those works or is it more or less lost to us like Russian poetry might no I actually I think the reverse I think polish so I think there's a a split in the 20th century maybe I'm biased maybe I read them in both but I think a lot of Polish
poet I think there there's a the troa of great post-war poets vava shorka ches mios ZF Herbert I think they work really well on translation and they don't rely on the things that make Russian poetry so hard and older polish poetry so hard which is rhythm and meter and extremely untranslatable word play there's a poet I love Al have lesan who's from kind of the early 20th century he's really barely been translated extremely difficult even in
polish doesn't work at all in English but I think especially Herbert is so spare in Polish as well there's so little it's it's such a poetry of ideas I think it comes through really well where should a person start what's your advice Herbert there's a little Al I think Lis Alvarez edited the little chess M was translated mios a modern poet you could start with Hermes PDA that's Hermes dog and star I
think Apollo and marcius the poem is maybe my favorite so you could just start with that poem specifically why isn't stanislav lamb more popular in the west today as a writer that's interesting I grew up on Stanis swlm like some people grew up on you know the Grims fairy tales my dad's a computer scientist his father started like set up one of Poland's first computers the world of polish science and science fiction so he used to read
the tales of perks the pilot and the Eon TI Stories the robot you know the the short fun ones like they were like they were fairy tales so I grew up with them I think I actually have trouble going back to those I go back to Solaris and I think Solaris is a real Masterpiece and I think it's had lasting influence but they are there's something pessimistic about them they don't have that thing that that ASM does I know we're even Dune of
World building and forecasting the human future far in advance it they are like kind of Kafka in space and that's you know absurd situations strange turns of events I think a pretty pessimistic view of progress and maybe that makes them hard to digest and also the kind of odd sense of humor with the the short stories almost a childlike sense of humor that Mak maybe makes them hard to take I think there there is there's been
a little bit of a Lem Revival though I know technologists some people like them futurologists like him of the cybernetics tales they seem weirdly close to the current state of llms and I think I've seen this mentioned once but
it's not generally known the idea that you use them to talk to that they're weird they they might be somewhat mystical they serve as therapists or oracles that's very much in Lamb quite early I I I think people should go back
to them I think you know I was just saying Solaris which I always thought about as this story about contacting a truly alien now it's like well this is it's a little bit what we're doing with virtual reality and and AI is like what would happen if you could actually talk to your dreams if you could revive people but they you could have the mimicry of Consciousness the appearance of Consciousness without anything behind it
without a Consciousness and and there's something seductive about it and there's something monstrous about it and I think he was there way ahead of anyone else and people should be going back to them maybe they will if we think about Eastern Europe more generally and we're trying to figure out where where various lines fall where the Roman Empire stretch to or not how much significance do you think that has for the current day or
has that just been obliterated as a factor the old you know I've actually gone to a lot of provincial museums on the old lemus on the old Frontier you can go and see the kind of I like going to the last Roman Fort you know you can go to in Budapest and see the frontier of the frontier you can go to go in Slovakia and see like the last Roman Camp I don't think it matters in a major way I think the traces come later it's
where the kind of the roow the imprint of Byzantium is still around the imprint of the East Roman Empire that and its extensions and the extensions of his church that really matters the world of Orthodoxy versus the world of Catholicism but those lines there was such an obliteration of the Roman Empire and its Legacy at least in Eastern Europe between the 5ifth century and the 10th Century those old lines got
obscured and new ones got put in in the 900s and the 1000s so the fact that so much of Croatia is Catholic rather than Orthodox should that make us more optimistic about econom IC growth for Croatia or it's just not going to
matter more more optimistic optimistic so Slovenia has done extremely well right yeah it's essentially at Western European living standards Croatia is not there but the fact that it is not dominantly Orthodox Christianity should
we then infer it's going to join the Western European community in some fundamental way that perhaps Bulgaria will not I think we should be optimistic about Croatia I think the EU is the driver of a lot of that I don't think we should be that pessimistic about Romania and Bulgaria I think actually Romania is showing and that's a you know coming out of communism a much more rural much more backward economy than a Slovenia but I
think it's growing really fast I think things are actually pretty okay there politically I think that idea of a kind of Orthodox disease is maybe a figment of geography more than a deeply cultural Matrix that we think I'm not I think we could be optimistic about Croatia and Romania simultane Bulgaria maybe too I'm not sure that I believe in the in a kind of Orthodox curse I think it has more to do with how
things shook up internally in former Yugoslavia and where those countries are in relationship to that industrial core of Germany Austria Switzerland how will Romania and Bulgaria in particular deal with depopulation so you can move anywhere in the almost anywhere in the EU their birth rates are low and probably falling there's also not so far away North Africa growing population lot of migration using boats they're closer
to that than you know Finland is what's that going to look like how many people will be in those places and where will they come from well Romania's birth rate is pretty high I think it's along the the top of maybe I'm a little out of date but along the top of European birth rates and partly because it's it's quite rural country they they change is they grow right and a lot of people have left we leave well right now there's a huge influx of
ukrainians and probably well movans all left I mean a quarter of mova mdova left mova and Romanians will also return I remember a great way to to find out what's kind of going under the surface in European labor and migration is go to bus stations Long Haul bus stations I remember trying to catch a a bus from sevil to Lisbon which for whatever reason is really hard they don't it's not a good connection but I
was at the bus station and they were tons of buses to to places like cul movan NES suchava bani like rural M moldavian cities the part of mova mavia in in Romania so 17 25-hour bus rides because there's so many Romanians in Spain and you can see the same thing in Italy same thing in in Portugal and some of those people are going to come back a lot of them are coming back and you're going to get a influx from Over The Border I mean right now
now Ukraine's going to lose people because of that economy is going to be in I think crisis for a long time the migrants that are coming over Overland from Asia they tend not to stop in the Balkans that's a throughway for them even in Hungary they're trying to get to Germany France Great Britain very rarely do the the migrants from I maybe a little bit but that's not a major influx because they're also the living standard Gap I I
think it's big enough does malavia have a future as an independent nation obviously it's very small it's next to conflict shouldn't they just join Romania and then just be part of the EU why isn't that a dominant move for them that has been a big political movement and that I think they if they could do it I think a lot of people would do it they just renamed their language Romanian the complicated history of of
moldavian as a separate language has Maybe come to an end they I think they vote in Parliament after my book went to press because I talk a little bit about moldavian language and and the moldavian national anth anthem and after it was impressed they they had this vote and moldavian is now I think officially Romanian and there is a move to I mean if they could make it work with Romania I think a lot of people would do it I mean then there's the
problem of transnistria which would not want to do it which is much more ethnically Russian and essentially a separatist enclave and so there would be there'd be a real problem on how to how to incorporate it but what mavian politics is not split right left it's split proe pro- Russia and pro euu is the dominant Force right now is there a future for a Serbian comeback where belgrad again becomes a major transport Hub the country does
well it moves away from flirting with fascism becomes Less close with Putin's Russia is there any path you can see for that happening or that's just a pipe dream a Transit Hub um well it originally was a big Transit hub for the Balkans say 30 40 years ago and it was relative to its peer group quite prosperous and now you go there you see nice old buildings but it feels like it doesn't have much of a future it's in Decline it
is one of the best Balan cities to party in it's one of the funnest Balan cities it has it's reinvented itself as a Balkan Party Center it really has this incredible culture of discos and these boats it's kind of house boats on the danu where people party on to become a genuine Transit Hub I guess they would have to make nights with everybody around them and rebuild I mean it's it is hard to travel around the Balkans now
because there's no the rails there hardly any longdistance Railways I mean I had a terrible time going from belgrad to Saro because you don't get get sent to Saro you get sent to Saro that belongs to Republic Sera the Serbian part of Bosnia if they could resolve all the regional conflicts then yes that city is in a perfect position it's why it was so strategic for the Ottomans and the hungarians and the yugoslavs but yeah it's a political
issue and it's a and I think it's one that's not going to be resolved very quickly between the Bosnian problems between Kosovo it's not happening in the short time however the Serbian solution is to be close to Russia and China so they are they have increasingly close links to especially China so maybe they're a they're an island of Chinese influence in the Balkans it's their future the Serbian obsession with I guess you'd have to
call it the 14th century is it an actual historic Obsession or is it a standin for some other Clash of values how do you frame that or think about it so when you ask serbians about Kosovo they'll tell you all these long stories about the Serbian Heartland is in Kosovo and Kosovo is Serbia and putting aside whether or not one agrees with any of that what is it that they really mean when they're saying it the battle of the field of blackbirds
1389 it is pivotal in Serbian memory and Serbian mythmaking that moment although they really mythologized it of the great defeat of Serbia at the hands of the Ottomans and then resting a kind of victory by assassinating the ottoman Sultan in the last second after the battle's been lost I think there's a real poll of History there's a real PLL of defeat but in terms of a larger value it's the dream of Serbia as a great
country there Eastern European countries kind of have fall in two categories there are countries that are small and they're happy being small some minority and countries that are small to medium and dream of being big Poland dreams of being big but it's those dreams have are less prominent than they used to be Hungary dreams of B being big of returning to being big and those dreams are still around and Serbia dreams of
being big it had that oversized role in Yugoslavia Yugoslavia was in a way at least to some serbs a not a Serbian Empire but a a big sphere of influence where they were the top dog they were the big player the Yugoslav kingdom is very much like that formed around Serbia and Kosovo is the last piece of that is the last piece of that you know once they lose that and monegro they're really a small country there really is no more dream so that's
how I read it once the United States steps back from that region which sooner or later will happen probably not sooner won't it just become part of Serbia and they'll get their larger Nation back well not if greater Albania has anything to say about it I mean Kosovo is so dominantly ethnically Albanian it is a but that doesn't mean they can defend themselves right or do we get another Balkans War where there's an
Albanian ethnic movement for some kind of Greater Albania there's a movement for greater Serbia the two Clash and they end up fighting I me if you go to Kosovo everywhere you see big silver monuments to the heroes of of the 1999 kosovar war and and AA element members that's going to be a I mean that just a horrible if if Serbia were to take over Kosovo it' be a nightmare Insurgency I mean maybe Serbia doesn't I definitely don't think it's
worth it except on a just satisfy a psychological craving but you know there's a little Serbian majority strip not clear majority but most of the serbs live like close to Serbia maybe some kind of partial partitioning in the future but an actual Serbian take over Kosovo I hope that doesn't happen because I think it' be ugly for both sides does Albania still have dreams of being something greater and larger because if
you look at an ethnic map it at least feels from the picture like maybe it could be it well there a lot of albanians outside Albania and it matters to to them I was in Montenegro and I was in the ALB there's an Albanian part of Montenegro that people don't know about in in Ulin used to be the great Venetian City there is is dominant Albanian the Macedonia North Macedonia has a Albanian majority region is almost a quarter
Albanian just about a quarter and then Kosovo is majority Albanian they I know that Albania has expansionist ideas but they have to the extent they have a foreign policy aims they do have to support their ethnic you know their linguistic allies and and there is a lot of interm movement I mean kosovars go go back and forth from Albania all the time albanians go to Kosovo there's that's an open border that's very easy to cross
that PS of people are constantly pouring across and that's those relations are very close so I mean does Albania have the power have the ability to project a lot of power into its neighbors maybe I'm not sure but politically they do have to stand up for their uh co-ethnics is there some level of per capita income where you think this all more or less goes away so you look at the two irelands you can't say it's settled there's no
reunification but it's quite peaceful and we're just not too worried about it right people are not religious they're fairly well off whatever the problems may be is that the likely future for the Balkans that they become like the irelands and everything festers but it's just all quite fine because wealth is up or do you think it's something darker than that that everyone's rich and happy and all the problems are kind of Belgian
problems that you kind of just live with yeah no one's happy and Belgium might split up still but nonetheless it all feels quite diffused rather it's Ireland or Belgium some people would say Spain maybe that's still up for grabs I think so I mean I think European Integra the more maybe this is naive but the more European integration happens the more that does lift some of those Regional and unclear problems as you can devolve
some things to to the EU if the you were expand there I think it would help a lot of those problems is there a specific income level I mean they have a far they have a long way to go in Albania North Macedonia Kosovo I mean these are the
poor aside from mova the poorest countries in Europe so the amount of catching up before you can be Switzerland and all live happily together is pretty big if we if they did get there and maybe they will I'm sure I
think the temperature would go down I don't think it's bread in the bone in some way I don't think I think the temperature has been going down I looked at some data recently the most rapidly growing economy in Eastern Europe is Poland no surprise but number two was Albania and the place is booming I mean what happened there no one expected that what have they done right it's striking I was in Albania I really did like a a deep
tour of Albania and the kind of ALB albop phone regions next to it last year and you do feel that boom you can feel there's a lot of Gulf investment Saudi Investment there's a ton of road building there's a ton of of actually really good cultural infrastructure being built they're doing a great job with museums and Heritage I was I was runting a car from somebody a little like Albanian car rental and the guy
told me you know he spends six months in Albania the other six months he goes to to Great Britain he works outside London as a programmer and he had programmed he had designed all his car rental agencies programming I think there's an openness I think you have return migration from from Italy and Switzerland and and the UK that's doing well there's enormous untapped tourism potential because it's the last piece of European like really
Prime Mediterranean Coastline that hasn't been developed deeply extensively in a small country I think that really matters and what else I'm not sure it's pretty you know it's under three million people so so small effects can have big consequences why are there so few Christian Muslim problems in Albania relative to many other places in the world there hardly anyi Muslims or some other reason you know there there there is a
kind of very moderate Sufi strain to Islam there although there are some there's some prizing by the by salapi there's some it's not just that anymore and it's also two kinds of Christian the the Orthodox South and actually the Catholic North was where the all the tribal violence those are the great Catholic Hill tribes or the really like violent ones that do blood Feud I mean the take on this in Albania is that so I
think one of the main poets said that the religion of albanians is Albanian ism is that they're all Albanian they're all Albanian speaking and it kind of dilutes those differences there's a lot of inter marriage the M Islam is very mild and the conflicts run in all different directions they're most historically they're Clan based clan on plan not religion un religion and the temperature Beyond just being this very mild Sufi
Islam the years of official atheism also cooled the temperature on religion a lot the religion is all three Catholicism Orthodoxy Islam are are kind of muted culturally and Albanian National Unity is more prominent
psychologically Hungary what is your read on the current political situation this has become a political football of sorts amongst the American right how bad is it how far is it straying from either whether it's democracy or rule of law
that is itself debated how should I think about politics and Hungary Hungary is pretty fascinating it's like if a an American Red State were completely captured by one party one party leader maybe a not it doesn't have to be a red steak but be like a Huey Long type figure and who then had was powerful enough to start really changing the rules and to always always color within the lines technically while changing what those
lines are to be able to change the Constitution and a kind of legal authoritarianism I've talked to people who know orbon knew him as a student knew him as an activist as a kind of libertarian is student leader and the thing they all say is that he's incredibly smart incredibly attuned to incredibly professional politician he's obsessed with the details of politics he's obsessed with the details of policy he's obsessed with the details of
self-presentation he has no particular ideological Allegiance this idea of him as a Christian nationalist is is something he came up with to strategically everything with him is a strategic calculation on how to build and maintain power his own power and his party's power and he's extremely good at it and he uses countless small measures that add up to Small electoral victories and then change takes those small electoral
victories and parlays them into huge constitutional and kind of transformational things across Hungary and so he controls more and more of the media more and more of the economy he's harder and harder to unseat and yet it's not a hard dictatorship I don't think he would ever fire on crowds I don't think with faced with mass protest he would resort to like excessive violence I don't think he has the support in the police or any of
this Security Services to be that kind of ruler even if he wanted to be so it's a strange hybrid and you think it's broadly compatible with Hungary just staying in the EU people looking a bit the other way on both sides but it can just continue or not I think it's amazing it's gotten to this point and the EU has eded him effectively EU funds which are hugely transformational in Hungary if you drive around the Hungarian Countryside every
it's kind of annoying because every 500 meters it feels like you come to a a roundabout under construction pointlessly and then that's all EU money and it's all under the control of companies that construction firms essentially act as extensions of of Fes and orban's power they control as a as a party this tap of of money and that helps solidify their power so the EU effectively helps fund their their
dominance as a political movement as a political party and to me it's strange that it's gotten to the point that it's gotten but unless there's a big movement in Hungarian society which has tended to be quiescent I don't know how the EU would really or why the EU would decisively step in and the things that have gotten people really out in the streets in Hungary the one of the big ones was when internet prices were going to go up and
they backed down he tends to back down when there's a big protest he does respond to that signal but they keep the temperature pretty low in Hungary why are so many hungarians so concerned with tranon the loss of territory who cares why should they care what are they hoping to get I don't think they care literally I think it's a little bit Remember the Alamo you know it is by this point has moved into the the realm
of of national symbols and symbology you see like you will see the trian belt buckles for sale and people wearing them where you have like free trian like big Hungary you can have a big silver one as a kind of like Texas style belt buckle I don't think that literally means when people wear those does that mean they want batka back from Serbia that they want Southern Slovakia back from Slovakia not not exactly they're one of
those Eastern European countries that's small but dreams of being big they still have that sense of being robbed which in a way they were since that their historical Destiny was denied and Orban will play with that a little bit he will you know suggest that maybe if Ukraine were to fall apart and it's about to fall apart maybe there's a little corner of Ukraine that on Hungarian over on the other side of the carpathians maybe they
should get that back but that's more in the realm of dreams and symbols not actual foreign policy aspirations I don't think there's it's something it is a little bit like the way Texans are about Texas hungarians are about Hungary but I'm not sure it's totally we should read that totally literally so all the study of Eastern Europe all the time you spent there well greater Poland earlier greater Lithuania maybe greater Serbia
greater Albania greater Hungary how has it shaped your view of just human nature flat out is it that you think well what I see in Eastern Europe is a bit of an outlier or do you actually start seeing the rest of the world more in those terms how has it shaped your general views of humanity I can you a little longer answer it has shaped a view of humanity and the part but the part that has the most isn't the kind of petty I think a little
bit Petty National aspirations it's not Lithuanian dreams of getting a little bit of Poland back or Hungarian dreams of getting the botka back the part that's really struck me deeply is the Holocaust is so my family a lot of them went through the Holocaust in Poland and studying the German occupation of especially Poland where where the Jews were so much and the process what happened there after the ghetto clearances after
41 and I think there's a real message about human nature there and sometimes it's people who talk about that will talk about well this is a Polish Jewish thing this is about antisemitism I think there's actually something deeper so after 19 so in there kind of three phases to the Holocaust in Poland there's an early phase where people are being rounded up and put into ghettos and then after in 1941 the German invade the Soviet Union
in a few months of operation Barbarosa a few months later they start clearing the ghettos out they start they start the real process of eliminating Poland's Jews and shooting people outright shooting people as they invading and rounding people up taking them from ghettos to concentration camps where they're gas and killed and then there's this period and so that's where most of the actual murder and death
happens and so but then from late 1941 to early 1945 there's a small group of survivors in Poland polish Jews who are in Peril from all sides are have no legal standing are non-persons can be hunted by anyone can be killed by anyone and have to find a way to survive and this truly Mal malus hsian a true hsian world and where food is becoming scarcer and scarcer money is scarcer everything is scarce in a real world of poverty because they're
surviving usually in some people have false papers and can survive anywhere hopefully as long as they're not denounced some people have a lot of money and can use that for themselves but the ones who escaped from the ghetto or were surviving or ran away from transports are otherwise just out at Sea in Poland have to usually make a bargain with somebody have to find someone and they can trade whatever they have whatever
money they have whatever they can promise for shelter and they do and a lot of people did that and it's hard to know exactly how many but a lot of people do that in 42 and then the war goes on and on much longer than people expected 42 43 44 winter after winter things getting harder and harder and the longer that runs the more this becomes a real kind of experiment in in human nature who survives and who doesn't who is denounced and who doesn't
I had family members who actually survived this way miraculously but some didn't and what I find in the short run a lot of people will make that bargain and be like I'll take your money and I'll put you up I'll put you in my cell I'll put I'll hide you in a room for a few months for a year for two years but the longer that goes the riskier becomes and the harder it becomes and the more there's a temptation to say actually I'm
G to give you up my neighbors can see this I can't go on with this I need the money I'm too scared I just doesn't seem like a point everyone's dead so if the war had been shorter a lot more people have been saved and the war the longer the war runs the more people are either denounced by their neighbors or their own protectors denounce them but the ones who are saved in the long run this is where the human nature comes in
what's so interesting is the kind of so how do you know who to trust and the people who end up protecting the people they protect the the longest hold out the longest hold out to the end are usually people who live on the absolute margins people who widows outcasts people with no money people in terrible shape people who whose lives would be transformed by having an iron stove or a pair of pants but if you were to take that when you're
hiding juice you were to take their money and buy something like that immediately all your neighbors would know what you're doing cuz every village is a 100 eyes watching everybody else so you make one move you make one change you buy a tin roof everyone knows what you're doing everyone knows you're hiding at you but the people who were the best at saving the people they saved tended to be people who never made a
bargain who never asked for money who just did it out of moral Instinct because if you buy a life you can sell it and the people who didn't enter into that transaction they hell fast the strongest so but how would you know that because just as possible those people on on the margins will also like you know they can denounce someone for a tiny reward for a bottle of vodka for a pilo of sugar those are some of the
rewards that people gave Jews and if you were to ask them beforehand how would you act in this situation what would you do I don't think they'd have any idea what they would do I don't think they could predict themselves how they would
act and that's where you get out the human mystery I think you don't know some people have that moral Instinct some people will do it out of an innate feeling but most won't and to me that means human nature is in some
ways completely plastic has no bottom has no back stop most people in the right situation in the wrong situation the worst situation will act in any way behave in any way I think there's almost no bottom to human behavior and the flip side of that is in the worst situation some people will act in the most remarkable way in the best way and there's kind of no way to know so it's really I mean to me although I'm not primarily hist of
the Holocaust that's the lesson I take away I'm sorry for for very long answer oh that's great given all your study of Eastern Europe what is it you feel you understand about the current war in Ukraine that maybe other well-informed people would not what do I understand about the war in Ukraine I'll tell you what that Ukraine what Ukraine is has shifted over time and is continuing to shift I think people who look at this war and and
started being aware of it in 2022 Ukraine is just a natural fact and they weren't necessarily sure what it is or where it comes from I think there is such a complicated story there of Ukraine between Poland and especially Russia of being entangled with both of those and and creating itself in relation and against both of those it's a it's kind of a tangled family tree and seeing how the pendulum has shifted even in a couple
years in the relationships between those three countries where it was actually kind of historically very tense between Poland and Ukraine and the Polish government which is always looking for something in the past to like a old wound to come back and celebrate and show off about they they're really showing off about they celebrating but commemorating the Polish Ukrainian violence in World War II was a major thing kind of platform of
like remember what the ukrainians did to us and in a in a in a Flash it's come switched to Poes and ukrainians brothers because of the big enemy and there's more to that like growing up I don't know Kil nitki and who he is to ukrainians and poles that these are entangled stories but do I actually understand the course of the war better and do I have a prediction for it and did I understand it better when it started probably not I feel like
I understand some of the roots and The Roots don't predict that well so maybe I don't have that much Insight looking forward in Eastern Europe sexual dimorphism maybe especially in parts of the Balkans is it likely to go up or down so a lot of men they at least put on an air they're some kind of manly man and they work out they lift weights they have muscles women there's a particular set of rols and Putin in particular but
many other leaders there like to attack the West for confusing the roles of men and women is that going to intensify in the East or that's just going to go away as per capita income Rises and they'll feminize too well they haven't started yet the fan male ethic is Alive and Well at least to this Observer and they're also just gigantic people down in former Yugoslavia you know maybe Greece would be the place to track I don't think
Greek men have have followed some kind of postmodern will beckian course I think we're a long way off from losing the Balan male as as a natural species I think we can improve the economy a lot and that male culture that ethos is going to be around for a while I don't think they anything to worry about last two questions first an educated American comes to you and says Jacob design for me a two week vacation in Eastern Europe
but forget about Budapest and Prague they've already been there they're not going to go or they want to go anyway for two weeks where do you send them what's the itinerary I ask one is war a concern is Ukraine on the table they're not going to go to Ukraine whether they should or not right that's a shame and Budapest is off the table so I selfishly we'll start you in Warsaw because I love Warsaw and I'm a war
sovian and Warsaw is derided but actually one of Eastern Europe's Most Interesting cities and you get that history the architecture is not great but the the history is right there under the surface if you know what you're looking for good to airport too and then I would send you South down to the mountains you can skip crack on the same basis as as over tourist did although it's wonderful as Prague and Budapest go down to Pish near
the Ukrainian border and get a sense of that old hapsburg infrastructure and and get a whiff of that that you're right on the border of Ukraine you're right on the border of Ukrainian influence and that you're in that East Old Eastern Orthodox part of Poland used to be you can go to the you can go to sanok to one of the wonderful museums there and then down through Slovakia through Eastern Slovakia the kind of Ruth Athenian Slovakia so the
the the parts of these Catholic countries that are Eastern Orthodox and into Northern Romania Northern Romania is the best place to see traditional Eastern Europe to see the world of hay making and handbuilt houses and that and the land of hay and wood maramures is my favorite area maramures is kind of proverbially Po poor northernmost hat of Romania and go to it's a village I love called Brett but the whole valley yud is one of the
most traditional lastingly traditional parts of Eastern Europe and you can get a taste of what it things might have been like certainly 30 years ago 100 years ago I think we are we to too late then maybe down to Bucharest you have a few more days left yeah if have a few more days left place or two let's go around Transylvania which is beautiful and has plenty of great places to stay C is great but I I
like actually outside inclusion is interesting but visre beeran these places that used to be German they have these fortified churches and usually there's a cool Hungarian nobleman's house you can stay in Prince Charles loves this area and has these like refurbished castles that he owns that you can or manor houses that you can stay in and it's really neat and Transylvania is also one of the most like culturally diverse places in
Eastern Europe and you have like real Roma life that a lot of the formerly German towns are now mostly inhabited by Gabor Roma the Adventist romance it's pretty neat and then you can go down to Bucharest no you know what I'm going to call an audible if you can if we can get across the border let's go to belgrad and go to one of those houseboats and have a great have some great Rosado I have a place some great borck meat borck
and party on a houseboat on a raft in the Dan we can finish there because belgrad's another yeah very last question just to repeat though to everyone Jacob's book goodbye Easter Eastern Europe an intimate history of a divided land I'm a big fan of this book one of my favorite of this year but finally what will you do next I am going to file my dissertation after an ungodly amount of time in between writing the book I went back to
it dumped most of it rewrote it and and took it on a different topic and it's done and I can file it probably this month and what's that on it's on ketman it's idea from the captive Mind by chess of muos of ideological masquerade or or disguise that he took from it's a concept in in Shiite Islamic practice that you read about where Shiites under duress under Sunni Sunni rule would pretend to be Sunni and had an obligation religiously
to do that under the abids and then he's like that's what life is like under stalinism that's what my peers were all doing they're practicing katmon they're splitting themselves into an inner self that believes in some older pre-war ideal of Catholicism or artwork or or regular science and there's an outward face that is doctrin earily Marxist or doctrin earily Soviet or something and how that was how he came
up with that how it the dialogues he had with some of his peers especially one kind of very interesting philosopher and then how that was received in Poland what people actually thought about it when they read about this guy who defected like is that did that really happen or did not so maybe I'll do something with that but I've got actually I've got all the signatures ready I got to do some bibliography and it's done congratulations on that and
Jacob thank you very much thank you so much Ty it's been a blast thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app if you like this podcast please consider giving a raing and leaving a review this helps other listeners find the show on Twitter I'm Tyler Cowen and the show is at cow and convos until next time please keep listening and [Music] learning